The reader will gather that this has not yet taken place. He will infer that the war correspondents are, like the last rose of summer, left blooming to ourselves. True, two or three generous and gifted souls in the army have come nobly into the breach with contributions; but the breach is nine columns wide--nine columns that persist in emptying themselves as fast as we fill them; in fact, nine columns which become fifty-four columns between each Monday and the succeeding Saturday. It is on this account that when the two or three generous and talented army men flung themselves in the breach, the breach was not aware of the fact--and we have not had the heart to wake it up and notify it that it was being filled, not caring to tell a falsehood even to a silly breach.
Come, then, ye gentles and geniuses, ye poets, ye anecdotists, ye thrillers and movers with the pen--join our staff, and put your mighty little ink-damped levers to the rock that we are rolling up the gigantic kopje of your thirst for news and entertainment. Your pay shall be the highest ever meted out to man--the satisfaction of souls content. Your company shall include a Kipling. Your readers shall be the bravest, noblest, proudest soldiers who ever served an earthly race.
You can ask no more. You can ask nothing else.
We published also a brief communication respecting the Dutch name Stellenbosch. This needs a word of explanation. It had long been noticed that whenever an officer was prominently connected with a losing battle, or exhibited marked incompetence in any field of military work, he got a billet at Stellenbosch, a bowery village deep down in the Cape Colony, where was established our base camp of supplies. The name therefore attained a deep significance and common usage in the army, and to say that a man had been "Stellenbosched" was but the ordinary polite mode of mentioning what might otherwise have had to be said in many harsher-sounding words.
(_Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force._)
Whereas it is considered necessary in the interests of the Orange Free State, and until arrangements may be made, that the provisions of the Customs Convention existing between the said State and the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Colony of Natal, shall be duly observed, and the Laws and Regulations appertaining thereto shall be enforced as soon as communication between the said Colonies and such portions of the Orange Free State as have been or may hereafter be occupied by Her Majesty's troops is restored, and the customary commercial relations are resumed; and whereas it is expedient that the necessary officers for the control and management of the Customs Department of the Orange Free State shall be appointed,